Rented a Camaro 2SS for the hell of it this wkend. unbiased review

UNKNOWN_370

Seeing the camaro in the auto show. I was impressed with the exterior but the interior left a lot to be desired. Leather seats gave the auto show camaros a slight touch of class but what appeared to be very cheap plastics in a camaro that had no running power to turn the interior lights and gauges on just looked awful. Plus I'm just in awe at the camaro's size. Took a test drive of the camaro some months ago but I couldn't get a real feel of the car. All I could really tell was it had a nice steering feel and loads of power. The tester was a cloth seat 1ss and I wasn't very impressed with the interior in that one either.

After months of hooplah in magazines and everyone having totally biased opinions on the camaro, plus my test drive feeling like a sub par experience. I did the best thing I can do. Rent a 2SS camaro from avis. This rental was not cheap. 2 days= $418 to test out the high end camaro for the weekend. I was informed that I was receiving a special rate and was saving $45 a day. So you already know... renting an SS is costly.

1st impressions. I guess the beautiful day and the right lighting made the camaro interior not so bad inside. It wasn't the luxury interior of my G37s coupe but it had all the necessary amenities necessary in todays cars. It even had a park assist chime. (Something the Z can use.) The cheap plastics were detracted by the interior accent package in the camaro. Overall, the quality of the interior at its 40k price point was a 6 out of 10. Its general appearance did suit the cars character so it rated 7 out of 10 in design. The seats were extremely comfortable and great for a long road trip. I drove in the car for 9 hours in 3 hour intervals in one day and never felt fatigued by the seats. The leather quality is a 7 and seat design a 10. So the overall interior quality is a 7.2 out of 10 in a 2SS. When the camaro gets there $5,000+ year end rebates pricing it under 35k. I will go as far as to raise its overall quality to 8.5. But at $40k 7.2 might sound too generous. Certain things allowed me to rate it this high...
Driving the camaro at night with the interior accent lighting turned this interior from fool to cool. And I gotta admit. I'm a sucker for the bottom gauges. I read in magazines that they are poorly placed and hard to read. I found it to be the complete opposite. I found that I can see all 4 temp n volt readings at the fastest glance. In manual mode I saw my gears change clearly as well as the digital speedp readout.
The boston acoustics stereo was not as good as my infinite but had good quality and clarity of sound. Better than the Z bose stereo. Stereo gets a 7 out of 10.

Ride and handling.
The question everyone wants to know... is the chunkiness of the SS a problem in the Camaros handling? My answer would be NO! The L99 has 400hp and 400lbs tq. Its gonna take more than 3800lbs to hold it back. What did hold performance back? The width and visibiltity. I didn't find the blind spot to be as bad as in my test drive. It took about 2 hours of driving to get comfortable with the car. But what was a constant issue for me was the right front of the hood. This this is so big that you don't knowi if you are gauging your turns as tight as you can. So when you take the turn, they are either too tight or too wide. I made more too tight turns than too wide. Occasionally bunny hopping the rear passenger wheel. Ooops. Oh well this car is freakin big.
But one thing I gotta say. It handles like a dream. Its suspension is dialed in right in between the middle of a corvette and a CTS. Highway lane changes are taken with grace and I can ride in the twisties almost as fast as in my G. There is slightly more body roll than my G but it holds up nice. Power is second to none. It makes my G feel like a family sedan in power. This car does 0-60 in 4.6 seconds and the quarter in 12.9. These are from my stopwatch... not a magazine. My only gripe is a serious delay in throttle response. But that gripe is also a sh1tload of fun. Here's why... I'm on the I-30west headed toward arlington. I'm doing 60 past a cop. 1/2 mile ahead of him I floor it. For 1 whole second the acceleration was nearly nill... then KABOOM! You take off like a rocket. I prefer immediate throttle response but it was just fun.
Same thing with the button shift but that wasn't fun. I'm trying to pop off shifts and sometimes I would wonder if it ever shifted? I hated the performance of the button shift sometimes. When it did work right it worked great but when it didn't... it sucked. I couldn't get over buttons instead of paddles either.
I hit this car hard. Got it up to 140mph. From 0-100mph, the car is so solid it felt like I only took it to 50mph. So this car begs to go fast. I did burnouts and half donuts and just had a blast. I cruised it soft and drove it hard. It did both well. The camaro is unpretentious and doesn't try to be something its not yet it plays the middle road of sporty and comfortable while being a drag king all rolled into one.
I have to say. After 2 days with the camaro. I became a fan. Would I buy it at 40k? Hell no!
At year end. Would I drop 33k-34k for a loaded 2SS with rebate programs? In a heartbeat. I'm gonna stop writing now but I drove this car a total of 12 hours in 2 days and drove well over 400 miles getting 18mpg combined. If u have further questions on my experiences. Just ask

nuTinmuch

Yeah I test drove the Camaro before I bought the Z.

What held me back was the interior and the price. For that money you can get a Corvette around here. Pretty sure it would be easier to test drive one too...

__________________
nuTinmuch! -- Platinum Graphite 370Z -- Check out my Gallery thread here!

j.arnaldo

Thanks for the review, dude.

Juruki

camaros and mustangs are back in the game for sure

BrianMSmith

I just moved from a 2001 SS to the 370Z.

I am very suprised at how good the old SS handling was compared to the Z. My SS was lowered, with some chassis mods, custom shocks and springs, proper alignment, and it had some incredible cornering ability, if a bit lacking in feel compared to the Z, and just not quite as quick turning, and a bit less outright grip at the limit...but we are talking small differences, some of which could just be the tires, such as the grip level at the limit. Where the Z wins big time is composure...the old SS live rear axle cannot handle any bumps whatsoever, without ruining the composure of the car and your confidence in the corners. The harder you drive in the corners, the more noticeable are the Z's advantages. The Z ride quality is much better. Of course, the Z engine is hardly noticeable compared to the experience in the SS, which had considerably more torque and noise. I think the Z is probably just as fast, but I never rev my car over 5k rpm, so it's hard to say, I prefer torque over revs for power. The Z also wins on interior quality. I get into the Z and its closer to a Ferrari than the SS is to the Z.

The old SS and the new Z are very different cars, you can love both for different reasons, but overall I'd pick the Z every time. That's why I got the Z instead of the new SS.

elmz

Thanks for the unbias review. I was a little disappointed though, to find out in the middle of reading this, that you were not a 370Z owner. I think it makes it harder for me to relate to.

j.arnaldo

The BIG difference is in the reliability department; Zs are "Much Better Than Average"...Camaros will start providing tell-tale signs soon. We'll have to wait and see! As for me, I'll stick to Nissans (owned 6, and all have turned out v-e-r-y reliable).

getmecoffee

Before I got the 370z I test drove the Camaro and felt the same way about the front right of the hood. Even the rear view mirror was a distraction.

WICKED_GRIN

^^^ Too bad you couldn’t give a direct comparison with the new Mustang 5.0 I have a BIG feeling, the Stang will score higher in every category!! and everyone who knows the history of the new Ford 5.0 “Coyote” engine, this puppy was designed (CAD) from the beginning for a supercharger. If fact…..Ford (down under) Falcon XR8 and FPV will have the Supercharged Coyote V8……..it’s just a matter of time before the US Stang is charged and eating the proposed Z28!!! just my unbiased opinion

Billarf

HTR Camaro Packages | Denooyer Performance Division

zmyride

In a straight line, a Camaro can compete with any sports car.

On a curvy road or track, that's when a sports car like Cayman, 370Z, BMW M3 show the Camaro "who's your daddy."

WICKED_GRIN

^^^ my “unbiased opinion” comparison was based upon equal dollars spent!!

280z/300zx

Not really. We took our 2SS camaro to auto-x the other weekend and I was surprised how well it did. It wasn't as poised as my 370z and you were always on the edge of control, but it pulled off some amazing times for it's size and weight. We got better times in our camaro than the smaller, lighter miatas, minis, and hondas. The track was not set up for long straights either. Most of it was slalom and S turns.

Having both the Camaro and the 370z I'll say I enjoy my 370z far more but only because thats what I'm used to. From the age of 17 I've had Z's. Got my 300zx at 17, bouth my 280z at 18, and just recently got my 370z (had a WRX for a little while in between there). The Camaro to me just has a different feel but is still a worthy car. My favorite feature of the camaro is launch control. Just slap it in first and pop the clutch and you get a perfect launch every time. So easy.

I'll close with this. The Camaro could learn a few tricks from the Z but the Z could also learn a few tricks from the Camaro. Lastly, to the OP, we got our fully loaded 2SS for 34k. No need to wait for a year or more for rebates and stuff. There are deals to be made out there, you just have to look for them

elmz

I gotta feeling since the Mustang has stepped it up, the Camaro will follow suit. It's sad to admit, but the days are near where we can no longer say muscle cars are only good at straight line performance.

UNKNOWN_370

I rent Z's as well from an exotic shop. I just thought that it would be wrong to compare to a Z. The Z is a focused sports car and I feel the Z perormance is too different to compare. This is why as a G owner. My review I feel was very fair. I moved from one GT to another.